


Keep It In Your Sights Now

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: Shades of Magic - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M, Multi, as such: spoilers! so many spoilers., post-A Conjuring of Light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 09:52:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10089680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: Holland travels with Lila and Kell. Somewhere along the way, they reach an equilibrium.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was all I could think about after I finished A Conjuring of Light, so like a person with good priorities, I spent my entire midterms week writing it. Canon compliant up until the very end of ACoL, so there are a lot of spoilers. Title from Sights by London Grammar.

_"Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed." - David Mitchell, Slade House_

Lila watches over Holland. She watches as his body is carried out of the ruins of Osaron's palace, as he is brought to one of the true palace's endless rooms, as he lies unnaturally still on the bed, skin and hair pale and washed-out against the red blankets.

Kell pokes his head in once, looking harried around the eyes. Lila raises an eyebrow, and he nods at her, relief breaking over his features, before he sweeps back out of the room. He just needed to see for himself that she was okay. Lila looks down at Holland, pulling a knife from its sheath.

She understands. It's important to see things with your own eyes. Even if she's only got the one.

"I could still kill you, you know," she tells Holland's body, twirling the knife over her fingers. She wonders what he would say if he were awake. Something condescending and infuriating, probably: when has Holland ever been anything else?

"I could kill you. You would even deserve it. Saving my life doesn't erase Barron's death. That's not how it works. Lives aren't interchangeable." She looks down at her knife. "I don't forgive you."

Holland, on the bed, is silent and still, his chest barely moving. It would be very easy to cut his throat. He was the one to defeat Osaron in the end, but so what? It was his fault Osaron ever returned in the first place.

Lila owes him nothing. She sheathes her knife.

Holland, of all people, doesn’t deserve the luxury of a quick and quiet death.

-

Holland is alone for a while after he first wakes up. The bed is too comfortable and his dreams too sharp, but where does he have to go? The palace is vast, and it holds nothing for him.

It hasn't been very long, truly, but Holland still misses his own London like a wound, one that he knows won't ever close. It grates, too, to know that he can't go back at will. He's at Lila and Kell's mercy for that, as in so many other things. 

It's not quite an emptiness, the place where his magic used to be. Holland imagines it's much like it would be to lose a limb, or an eye. He can almost feel the outline of it, the negative space left in its wake, a memory almost but not quite forgotten.

He doesn't think he'll ever be able to completely forget.

After what Holland guesses must be several hours, there's a knock on the door. He says nothing, and a few moments later the door opens to reveal Kell, mostly cleaned up from the fight, but his copper hair still in terrible disarray. He's holding a bowl of soup.

"I want you to take me back," Holland tells him, cutting off whatever Kell was going to say next. "To my London."

Kell blinks. "Well," he says, "you're still going to need to eat dinner first."

He sets the bowl on a side table in a corner of the room. There's so much useless furniture, all patterned in bright yellow and gold. None of the Maresh's, it seems, have ever encountered the concept of subtlety. 

Holland is sitting on the bed, back against the headboard and knees pulled up. He doesn't move.

Kell huffs out a breath through his nose. "It isn't poisoned."

If Holland gets up, he'll stumble, or fall. He's had enough of showing weakness in front of Kell. 

"The city's back to normal." Kell sits down in a chair by the table. He leans back, his body seeming to collapse in on itself. "Well, as close to normal as it can be."

"Lovely," says Holland, hearing the flatness in his own words. "I'm very happy for you. I want to go home."

"Don't act like you don't care," Kell says, eyes closed. "I don't understand why you feel like you need to do that."

"No, you wouldn't. If you're going to tell me no, tell me no. Stalling is a waste of both of our time."

Kell presses his hands to his eyes. Despite his obvious exhaustion, he looks so comfortable here, in this room, in this palace. A boy raised to be a prince. It doesn't make Holland hate him as much as it used to. Instead there's something lurking underneath his breastbone, something that isn't quite regret. "I don't want to make your choices for you," he says. "But you could stay. If you wanted."

"Why would I want that?" Holland asks acidly. "To stay in the palace where I was held in chains?"

Kell drops his hands and looks at him, and does not say the obvious thing: _As if your world is any different_. Kell's fumbling attempts at kindness are worst when he manages to hit the mark. "I don't mean stay in the palace," he says. "Lila and I have talked about it. We're going to travel. I've always wanted to see more than just this city. Our cities."

"Your brother's going to let you do that? While you hold his life in your hands?"

Kell's mouth tightens. "He's king, now. He has to be able to stand without me. I'm not going to do something stupid and get him killed." 

"Your record in that area is not precisely spotless."

"Are you complaining?" Holland remembers, with a sudden visceral clarity, what it felt like to be trapped under the river. Heavy and wet and cold. Until Kell jumped in after him, and Lila after Kell.

"No." Holland stands up, skimming his hand along the side of the bed to steady himself. He manages to collapse in the chair across from Kell's without incident, though he can feel Kell's eyes on him and his unsteady movements. 

The soup is good. Holland manages a few spoonfuls. It tastes like nothing he's ever had in his own world. 

"I'm asking you to travel with us, Holland."

"I don't like ships."

"I noticed," Kell says, with the hint of a smile. "There's a lot to see, outside of Arnes."

"There's plenty of my own world I've never seen."

"And you'll see it, if you go back?"

"It's none of your concern, Kell. You don't have to worry about me."

Kell rolls his eyes. "I don't feel _obligated_ , Holland."

"And what does Miss Bard have to say about this?"

"I'm sure she'll come around."

Holland surprises himself by laughing. He's out of practice: it's an awful and creaking sound. "It might be worth it to agree just to see the look on her face."

"Then do it," Kell says. He crosses his legs and leans back further in his chair, projecting nonchalance with every part of his body. He's still a terrible liar. "What have you honestly got to lose?"

More things than Holland can possibly name. The chance to die in a place that knows him. One last look at the Silver Wood. To not have anyone expect anything from him, ever again.

He eats another spoonful of soup. Kell would take him back if he insisted. He's stubborn, but he knows better than to deny Holland this. It would be the last time they would ever see each other, Kell dragging him across the border between worlds, a task Holland can never do again.

The thought hurts, sharp and deep.

He doesn't know what he wants. He's never had to think about it. There's only ever been one thing: to bring life back into his world. Not to become a king, but a savior. To be the kind of person that Kell is, simply by breathing. 

"I'll go," Holland says. He doesn't look at Kell. "Not forever. But for now." Perhaps there is something in this world that can help his own. Or perhaps he's being selfish. Holland wouldn't know how to tell. 

Kell's smile is mostly in his eyes, the blue and the black both. Holland thinks, again, of drowning.

-

Kell tells Lila as quickly as possible, because he assumes it'll be better to get it over with.

"So what you're saying," Lila says, pacing Kell's room, hands tucked in her pockets, "is that not only did you dissuade Holland from going back to White London, you also invited him to travel with us for as long as he likes?"

Kell shrugs. "It's not like I could just leave him here." 

"You'd rather him cause trouble for us than the palace?"

"We're certainly more equipped to handle it," Kell points out. "And anyway, I don't think he's going to cause any trouble. What is there left for him in White London? And what is there for him here?"

"What is there for him with _us_?" Lila tilts her head to the side in a way that reminds Kell of Alucard's cat, who's taken to wandering the palace halls over the past few days. 

Kell saw the hollowness in Holland's eyes. He can't imagine that Holland would last particularly long, left to his own devices. "We're the last Antari," he says. "We're the only people left like him. Maybe that's enough." 

Lila shakes her head. "You know, you're just as bad as Alucard when it comes to picking up strays."

"Ouch," Kell says.

Lila grins, all teeth. "Fine. But he's your responsibility."

"I think I can handle it." Kell hopes, as he says it, that it's true.

-

Lila takes to her captaincy immediately. It's just like her--a few months on a ship with Alucard Emery, and now she's an expert. What she lacks in knowledge and experience she makes up for in sheer willpower and the ironclad devotion of her crew. Kell watches in amazement as she wins each member over, without even seeming to try. Kell understands. He knows, more than anyone, that there's something magnetic about Lila when she's given free reign.

It's a good thing Lila is the captain and Rhy is the king. Kell is happy enough just to complete his tasks and look on as Lila bosses her crew around.

He watches Holland, too, less and less warily as time goes on. After a week, it's clear that he's not going to cause any trouble; it's clear too that for all his claims to the contrary, something is very seriously wrong with him. He was still walking with a cane when they first set out, but Kell expected him to start getting better--the palace healers had assured him that there was nothing truly wrong with Holland, just a bone-deep exhaustion. But if anything, Holland's already pale form has only further bleached in color since they left the palace. He hardly eats anything in the mess, and spends most of his time confined to his cabin.

"I don't know what you expected," Lila tells him when Kell brings it up one night, the sea breeze ruffling her hair. She's doing something complicated to the rigging that Kell doesn't understand. "He's dying, Kell."

Kell leans back against the railing and grimaces. "We don't know that."

Lila tugs on a rope and levels Kell with a flat look. "Do you have a better explanation? Losing his magic took something from him. It's obvious. He knows it, too."

Lila is probably right. But it isn't _fair_. Lila will laugh at him if he tells her that, will point out that life isn't fair, but it's true. Holland gave up his magic, and Kell knows what that means for an Antari. Even his own loss, the pain that comes with every exercise of his powers, is at times nearly unbearable. 

It shouldn't be so much to ask, for Holland to get to live, after everything he's been through.

"Don't make that face," Lila says. "He knew what he was risking, when he used the Inheritor. We all did, and we all would have done it anyway. It was his choice."

"He didn't choose to _die_."

"He chose to do everything he could to stop Osaron. Considering he let Osaron loose in the first place, it doesn't seem like such a bad trade to me." Lila finishes up her work, giving a few knots one last tug, and steps back. 

Kell sighs, tipping his head back to stare at the stars, the small points of light winking at him from the dark. "There has to be something we can do," he says. "We have to try."

Lila snorts. "Do we? Would he do the same for us?"

"He saved your life, didn't he?"

Lila inclines her head, conceding the point. "Well, what's your plan?"

Kell shrugs. "I hadn't quite gotten that far. But you kept Alucard's map, didn't you?"

"Maybe."

"I was thinking, if we go to see Maris--" 

"Or," Lila says, stepping close to Kell, poking him in the chest, "we could use something we already have."

Kell looks down at where she's pointing. He's taken to wearing the binding ring they got from Maris around his neck--after what happened when Holland used the Inheritor, he's felt too uneasy to wear it on his finger. But there was no point in leaving it at the palace. He and Lila were the only people in the world who could use it.

"Do you think that would work? Giving him our power?"

Lila raises an eyebrow. " _Our_ power? You're the one who wants so badly to save him."

Kell tucks his hands into the pockets of his coat, looking Lila in the eye. Her mouth is set, her dark hair fluttering in the wind. Both of her eyes, the real one and the fake, are gleaming. Lila sometimes looks as if there's a spark within her, like she's lit up from the inside. It hits Kell, every so often, how much he loves her.

Lila endures his scrutiny for a moment before she shrugs it off, pushing past Kell to look out at the sea. "Fine," she says. "If we do it, we do it together. But Holland won't be happy about it."

Kell settles next to Lila against the railing. "You could help me talk him into it."

"Don't push your luck. You talked him onto this boat, Kell, you can talk him into staying alive." 

"I'm glad you have so much confidence in my persuasive abilities."

"Not really," Lila says, giving him a sharp smile. "I just know you're too stubborn to let it go."

Kell brushes a piece of hair out of her face and kisses her on the cheek. "Thanks," he says, as she elbows him in the ribs.

-

Lila and Kell corner Holland in the mess. It isn't particularly impressive--it took Holland much longer than it should have to make his way here in the first place, to balance his cane with his plate of porridge, and now that he's sitting down, he isn't planning on moving for a while.

And anyway, it's not unexpected. Kell Maresh is as determined as he ever was.

Kell sits down across from him while Lila gets distracted yelling at one of her crew, a tall reedy man named Stornras. Apparently, he's been remiss in his duties.

To his credit, Kell gets straight to the point. "Lila says you're dying."

Holland stirs his porridge. He isn't sure he can stomach another bite. "I don't remember asking for a medical assessment."

"Do you _want_ to die?" Lila asks, slinging herself into the seat beside Kell, chewing on a hunk of bread. "There's faster ways to do it, especially out at sea."

"I wanted to die at home," Holland says, shooting a pointed look at Kell. "And we all know how that worked out."

The look on Kell's face is almost enough to hurt. Holland can't bring himself to regret it. Kell will do better in the world if he learns that some harsh truths are immutable. 

Kell pulls the chain around his neck over his head. The Antari binding ring is hanging from the end, twisting in the air. 

"I'm surprised you kept it," Holland says, watching it spin.

Kell wrinkles his nose. "Alucard suggested Lila and I could use them as wedding rings."

"And what did you have to say to that?" Holland asks, amused.

"Me? Nothing. Lila did all the talking for me when she punched him."

"He deserved it," Lila says, still eating, and mostly ignoring their conversation, from what Holland can tell. 

"Please tell me this isn't going where I think it's going," Holland says.

"What? It's worth a try, isn't it? If it doesn't work, it doesn’t work. But losing your magic is what's wrong with you, isn't it? I'm not an idiot, Holland. It's eating you out from the inside. If Lila and I can share our powers with you--"

"Kell," Holland says icily, "what great joys do you imagine being Antari has brought me? I'm done. I did what I had to do. I've no magic to speak of anymore. And you know what? I'm glad. My power has never given me anything but pain. It's better that I don't have any at all."

"You'd rather _die_ than even come into contact with any kind of magic?" Kell asks. It's clear he doesn't understand at all. "You can't just throw your life away."

"Why not?" Holland asks, his voice ringing out louder than he meant too. The mess is nearly empty now, and the last few stragglers are wisely clearing out. "You haven't given me a reason, Kell. I agreed to take this journey with you to get out of your London, to escape the stink of it. I don't know what more you're expecting from me. If you want me to live, you're going to need to tell me why."

"Then why did you agree to come?" Kell asks, voice hard. "If all you planned to do was to die?"

"He agreed to come," Lila says, looking up, "because you asked him to, Kell."

Holland presses his lips together in a thin line. "We have a story, in my London," he says. "The someday king. Once, I thought--it doesn't matter." He looks away--he doesn't want to face the desperation in Kell's eyes, the calculation in Lila's. "When he returned, he'd bring magic back to our world. Bring it back to life. If he exists--if he existed--I think he'd be something like you." Kell doesn't belong in Holland's London--he never did, even in those days when he acted as an envoy. But there's a fierceness to his eyes that Holland has never been able to shake. "I don't know, Kell. Maybe I made a mistake."

Kell looks between Lila and Holland for a long moment. He pulls at the edges of the ring, splitting it in two, and does it once again, making three. "Do you remember the first time we met?"

Holland looks down at the rings, and nods. "You were very young," he says. "I couldn't believe the kind of life you must have lived. You smelled like roses."

"You told me that you weren't like me. But you were wrong. There are three Antari, one from each London. We're the only ones who understand what that means, to bleed for the things we love."

"What makes you think I'm capable of loving anything?"

"You love your home," Kell says with conviction. 

"You love it so much, you nearly got us all killed for it," Lila says idly. 

"We all understand sacrifice, Holland. Dying won't undo anything you did, the good or the bad."

Holland closes his eyes. "Maybe I'm just tired."

"Tough shit," Lila says. She stands up, pulling the first ring, the anchor, out of Kell's hand. "You've got mistakes to make up for, and sights to see. You agreed to come on this trip with us, like it or not. Rhy--sorry, _King Maresh_ \--even signed off on it. And anyway. If you die now, you'll never see home again." She slides the ring on her finger. Kell flicks his gaze to Lila for a long second, and then he picks up one of the remaining rings and puts it on.

They both turn to Holland, two pairs of mismatched eyes that see too little and too much all at once. Holland never truly feels seen--he knows he has too many fissures for that. But that moment is the closest he's ever felt to it.

"Holland," Kell says into the silence. "At least let us try."

Holland stands up and takes the last ring. He puts it on his finger before he can regret it.

The connection settles in his gut like a stone sinking to the bottom of a lake. It's different than it was before. Then, his power was a stream flowing alongside Lila and Kell's; now, it's like he's a dried up riverbed, and rain has finally come.

Distantly, he realizes his knees have buckled. Kell isn't fast enough to catch him, and Lila doesn't move. 

"Holland? _Sanct_ , maybe this was a bad idea--"

"I'm fine," Holland says, shrugging off Kell's arm around his shoulders. He feels lighter than he has in days. He hadn't realized how weighed down his body felt, like he was slowly sinking into the earth. Now it almost feels as though he could float away. 

Power has never brought Holland freedom before. It's strange.

He reaches out and pulls, yanking on the thread of Kell's magic with all his might. 

Nothing happens. Holland falls forward onto his hands in relief, his head hanging down, pale hair falling across his face. He closes his eyes.

"We didn't kill him, did we?" Lila's boot nudges Holland's leg. He opens his eyes to glare up at her. "There you are." Lila kneels down and peers at his face. "Both still green."

Holland ignores her. "Did you feel that?" he asks Kell.

"The pull? I did. It wasn't--it's hard to explain." His face is screwed up in concentration. "I could feel it, but it was just--like air, passing over. I'm sorry."

Holland shakes his head. He realizes that he's smiling. "I told you," he says. "I was only ever its slave. I don't want it." Magic has never brought Holland the things he wants. It never will. His throat is tight, his arms shaking, and he shivers. Kell, in one fluid motion, pulls off his coat and settles it around his shoulders. 

It's heavier than Holland expected. Not just the coat--all of it. Kell's gaze, the curious tilt of Lila's head, and the weight in his gut, the pull tying all three of them together. 

His heart is beating steadier than it has in weeks. Underneath it, he can feel Kell and Lila both, the insistent pulse of their blood, carrying him along. 

It never occurred to him before that he might have long to live after Osaron was finally defeated. He doesn't know what to do with the feeling anymore than he knows to do with the fact that Kell and Lila both won't stop _watching_ him. 

"Congratulations," he says, spreading his fingers against the floor. The grains and catches in the wood feel clear, as if he's been living in a fog. He feels as thought he's been dumped in cold water. "It worked." 

Lila stands up and dusts herself off. "Well, now that that's settled," she says, "some of us actually have ships to run."

Kell gets up too. Holland wants to make him take his coat back, but Kell follows Lila out of the mess with one last lingering look before he can.

Alone again, Holland pulls the coat tighter around himself. He lays down on the floor and watches the ceiling shift, and thinks, for the first time in a long time, about the future. Kell's coat smells like roses.

-

Lila tries not to gloat too much about the binding rings working. Kell thanks her, and also stops spending so much time looking at Holland like he killed his cat, so she figures it was worth it. 

She remembers Holland's face before they all put on the rings the first time, when she mocked him for wanting to be chained. It still makes her feel sick. 

She put on the ring first, this time. That makes her anchor. It's not as bad as she expected it might be, to be tethered that way, and not only because she knows Holland won't be able to pull on her magic. There's a safety to it, the same warmth she feels whenever she's near Kell. 

Lila thinks she might be getting closer to understanding Holland. It's an unsettling thought.

Two weeks into their journey, they dock at Rosenal to pick up supplies and to gather information. Kell keeps shooting Lila worried looks. She ignores them, keeping her chin tilted up. 

It's just a port, a city like any other. It's not even the first place where Lila has almost died. 

Kell doesn't seem to think so. Kell watches Lila like a hawk, and refuses to leave her side after they disembark. Holland trails them both like a shadow, but at least he's subtler about the way his eyes follow her. 

Lila can't decide if the binding rings are better or worse when they're all together. Something in the spell hums, just at the back of her awareness, and she can't ever forget that Kell and Holland are there. When they're together, the humming gets louder. It's not unpleasant. But Lila doesn't like not having the choice to ignore it.

Not that Kell has ever been easy to ignore. Especially when he's certain she's going to get herself killed.

"You can stop looking at me like that," she says to him, finally, when they stop at a tavern to get a drink and keep an ear to the ground for rumors. 

"What?" Kell asks, unconvincingly. 

Holland raises an eyebrow. "It is in all of our best interests that you don't bleed out again in the street."

"I don't need you to _worry_ about me," she says, disgusted.

"I think Kell is more worried that you're going to do something rash."

Kell kicks Holland under the table, scowling. Holland gives him a cool look.

Lila knocks back the rest of her ale. It's not very good, but it's her third. Like one of Alucard's lieutenants always said: any drink, no matter how bad, gets better with every glass. When she stands up, the floor sways a bit beneath her feet, but that's okay. She's got her sea legs now.

"Where are you going?" Kell asks.

"You're not my mother," Lila snaps. Kell's concern is like an itchy cloak against her skin; she aches to be rid of it. She's _fine_. She'll be fine, no matter what happens. That's what it means to be Delilah Bard. 

Delilah Bard isn't scared of any city, no matter what happened here before. She's determined to prove it.

She nods her head at a group of men playing cards in a corner of the pub. "I'm just going to go see if I can win some money."

"Lila," Kell says, but it's Holland who grabs her wrist as she starts to walk away.

"At least take one of us with you," he says mildly. Lila, shoving with her will in the way that Kell taught her too, wrenches his hand from her wrist and flattens it to the table.

"Don't tell me what to do," she says. 

Holland spreads his fingers against the table. His face is still a mask. Kell's eyes dart between them, a furrow in his brow. Neither of them say anything as Lila walks away.

She hasn't gotten much better at Sanct since her last disastrous game with Jastra. And the men she's playing with don't take kindly to her brand of cheating. 

In the end, she only has to stab one of them, though, which Lila counts as a successful night out.

She does get thrown out of the pub. Kell tumbles out of the door after her, tripping over his feet, his expression tight. Holland follows at a more sedate pace.

Lila dusts herself off, finally feeling settled in her own skin. Her blood is singing.

"That was fun," she says. Kell's expression darkens. "Oh, come on. You didn't even try to stop me. And it was fine!"

"I was going to intervene, but Holland talked me out of it." 

Holland, when Lila looks at him, only shrugs. 

Kell crosses his arms. "Did you find out anything useful about pirate activity? You know, the entire point of this whole endeavor?"

"There are plenty more pubs in this city," Lila says. The night feels wide and open before her. They can do anything at all. She stretches and grins at Kell, showing her teeth.

"You're worse than Rhy," Kell says sourly. 

"I'll take that as a compliment."

-

They manage to make it back to the ship from Rosenal without further incident. Holland feels strangely naked throughout the entire night, knowing that if something happens, he'll be entirely helpless--Lila's display of power made that evident, if nothing else.

He's still glad to be rid of his magic. But it's an unsettling thought, that if she really does get herself cut open again, Holland won't be able to do anything to fix it. That if it comes to a fight, he'll only have his dagger.

Kell does his best to continue sulking for most of the night, but Lila's good mood turns out to be infectious. Holland even finds, after they return to the ship, that he had a good time. 

For the past few weeks of their voyage, Kell has been making it a habit to come visit Holland in his cabin. He keeps making excuses to do it--bringing coffee or food or a deck of cards to play Sanct.

"Lila always cheats," he says, by way of explanation, as if he thinks that Holland won't.

Two days after they leave Rosenal, he comes to Holland's cabin with nothing at all. "Lila told me to go belowdecks and stop bothering her," he says, a smile on his face. "Apparently I was hovering."

"She's quite bossy, your Lila," Holland says, head resting against the wooden walls of the cabin, eyes closed against the rocking of the ship doing its best to turn his stomach. The binding rings may have cured the worst of his ailment, but he's still prone to seasickness.

"Don't let her catch you calling her that."

"Bossy? I think she knows."

"No," Kell says, " _mine_. Lila's her own woman. Telling her otherwise is a good way to get a knife to the back. Or the front."

"I see your point." Holland opens his eyes. Kell is standing in the center of the cabin, hands in the pockets of his now-grey coat. Holland spreads one of his arms wide. "Please. Make yourself at home."

Kells rolls his eyes, but he does deign to sit beside Holland on the bed. 

"I wonder, is she like that all the time?"

Kell levels Holland with a sharp look, his blue eye glinting. Still so easy to rile, even after all this time. "Now you sound like Alucard. Try asking Lila what she's like in bed if you want to get killed even faster."

Holland laughs. "Just an idle question," he says. 

"What about you?" Kell draws his knees up, resting his arms across them, getting his boots on the bed. Holland wrinkles his nose. "You've never spoken of any lovers."

Holland searches the question, looking for the barb. But Kell, to all appearances, is simply curious. 

"In a place like White London," Holland says, "love is dangerous."

"Love is dangerous everywhere, Holland." Kell's voice is serious. 

Stubborn as ever. "Her name was Talya," Holland tells him, eyes on the wall across from him. "She tried to kill me."

"Not so unlike Lila, then," Kell says, without bite. "I'm sorry, Holland." He reaches a hand out, as if to put it on Holland's shoulder, but Holland gets up before he can. If he were Kell, he would pace, but Holland finds stillness more calming than movement. He clasps his hands behind his back, facing away from the bed. He hears Kell shift.

"Was there ever anyone else?"

Holland thinks, unbidden, of Ros Vortalis. The man who was, for two short years, Holland's king. His friend. 

He considers saying nothing. Holland has spoken to no one of Vortalis, since the man's death at the Danes' hands--who would he have told? Certainly not Kell: inquisitive, headstrong, exhausting Kell, who is always so sure he knows best, when he hardly knows anything at all. 

Holland can't feel it, despite the rings, but he knows it hurts Kell to use his magic now, a deep crease between his brows that's terribly obvious, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. 

Kell's still a naïve fool, at heart--but he's one who knows what it's like to lose the things and the people closest to him. And maybe it would be nice, for someone else to know.

"There was a king," he says, knowing no other way to start. "Before the Danes. He was there when you first visited us. I helped him take the throne. He was--not kind, or good. No one is truly kind in my London." Talya had taught him that, if nothing else. "But he tried. He wanted a better city. If he had lived--all of this, Osaron, all of it--if he had lived, it might never have happened."

"I remember him." He can feel Kell's eyes on his back. "You believed in him that much?"

Holland laughs. "Not really," he says. "I'm sure Vortalis would have taken the power offered by Osaron if given the chance. In the end, he was also a fool." 

"Did you love him?"

Holland turns back to face Kell. He looks, again, only curious. "Of course," he says. "He offered me hope. That's all love is, isn't it? Hope to wrap yourself in, a barrier against the dark? Hope that the future will be brighter, that the present will be bearable, that your lover won't betray you."

The worst thing about Kell is his tendency towards pity, and his inability to hide it in his eyes. Holland thinks about hitting him: Kell can overpower him easily, now, but it would hurt him to do it. "Even in White London," Kell says, "I don't believe that's true. We love because we don't have any choice." He looks towards the ceiling, to where Lila Bard is standing on the deck, and he presses a hand to his chest, against the scar that Holland knows lies over his heart. "Love is a tether to the things that matter to you. A light to guide you home." He looks Holland in the eyes. "It's the knowledge that you'll give up anything, for those you love, and that it'll be worth it if you do." 

Of course Kell would think of it like that. "Idiot," Holland says, and in that moment he wants more than anything to get out of this room, out of this ship, out of this world. To go back to his London and the quiet and simple death that awaits him there, to get away from Kell and his insistence on helping Holland, no matter the cost.

Instead he does what he has to--Kell is right in that, at least. It isn't a choice. He puts his hands to Kell's face and leans down to kiss him on the mouth. If Lila is going to stab him for anything, it should probably be this. 

Kell opens his mouth in what might simply be surprise, and Holland pulls him closer, one hand sliding back to grip his hair. Kell is warm and stubborn and a savior, everything Holland has ever wished he could be.

"You're nothing like Vortalis," he says to Kell's stunned face. "Come to think of it, he was a little like Lila. Maybe you would have liked him." He steps back. "But Vortalis is dead, and I'm alive. I'm sure we can at least agree that love isn't fair."

He leaves Kell there, a hand pressed to his mouth, and goes to stand above deck and watch the waves crashing down.

-

"Holland kissed me," Kell says, sitting cross-legged on Lila's bed. She's busy pulling off her boots. When she looks up, his face has a determined cast to it, mouth a hard line. 

"Took him long enough," Lila says, as she turns back to stripping off her socks. She sneaks a glance at Kell's expression. It's just as good as she expected. "What? Thought I'd have him thrown over the side of the ship?"

"It wouldn't be an unprecedented turn of events." 

"You're not my property." Lila unbuckles her belt, and starts working on her trousers. 

"Lila," Kell says, equal parts affectionate and despairing. 

Lila swings herself into Kell's lap, and starts unbuttoning her shirt. "Holland thinks he's smart," she says. "Maybe he actually is. I wasn't sure if he'd noticed."

"Noticed what?" Kell's doing an admirable job of keeping his eyes on Lila's face, even as his hands come up to rest on her hips. 

"I think the only reason he wants so badly to hate you is because he's afraid that otherwise, he might get too attached to you," Lila says. "Guess he finally made his choice."

"Oh, and you're the expert?"

Lila wraps her arms around Kell's shoulders and bites at his neck. "Just giving you some friendly advice." 

Kell presses one hand to her back and another to her neck, guiding her face up so that he can kiss her. Kell, to Lila's despair and delight, still has absolutely no guile at all. He gives everything away when they kiss. It used to put Lila off balance, the honesty of it. Now she finds it grounding, the one solid thing in an ever-changing sea. 

"To clarify," Kell says, when Lila pulls back and grins down at him, "you're not going to slit either of our throats?"

"No," Lila says. She gathers Kell's hands in hers and presses them down against the bed. "The more important question is, what are you going to do about it?"

Kell sighs, and tips his head back when Lila goes for his throat again. "I don't know. Got any more friendly advice?"

"My advice," Lila says, nipping at Kell's jaw, "is to think about how many people in your life you've been willing to drown for."

Kell's hands clench in the blankets under hers, and he says nothing. Lila lets him get away with it.

-

After Kell falls asleep, Lila rolls out of bed and makes her way to Holland's cabin, silent on her feet.

Holland is awake when she gets there; probably he knew she was coming. He's sitting in the room's only chair, a glass of wine in his hand. He raises it to Lila as she comes in.

The bottle is still sitting beside him, so Lila strides across the room and takes it, bringing it to her lips to drink deep. Holland only raises an eyebrow at that.

"You know," Lila says, wiping her mouth, "there is such a thing as being too direct."

That startles a laugh out of Holland. He has, Lila will admit, a nice laugh: throaty and soft, almost a little dusty from disuse. Lila doesn't trust easy laughs. "That's an odd sentiment, coming from you, Bard."

"Not really." Lila takes another drink from the bottle. "I'm a thief. The whole point is to take something without anyone noticing that it's gone."

"Are you suggesting that I'm trying to steal Kell?"

"I'm suggesting," Lila says, drawing the words out, "that you _should_ be trying to steal Kell." She sets the bottle down. "And if you've already broken the locks, there's no reason to stop with one thing. Any good thief knows that."

Holland blinks at her. He puts the wineglass down on the desk, still half full. His face is blank, as it almost always is. It's the most annoying and fascinating thing about Holland, the reason that he sticks in Lila's mind like a thorn: Holland keeps himself as tightly locked away as any person Lila has ever met. It makes her fingers itch. She can't help but want to crack him open and find out what's inside. "I see," he says. "And how does Kell feel about that?"

"Kell's an idiot," Lila says, fondness coloring her voice. 

"On that, at least, we can agree."

"Glad we could reach an understanding." Holland really isn't as smart as he thinks he is: even after Lila tips his chin up and leans down, he still seems startled by the kiss. 

Lila knows, as she does it, that it's a bad idea. 

Holland doesn't kiss like Kell at all. Where Kell is open and messy and straightforward, Holland is guarded. He doesn't pull back, he gives as good as he gets, but he never moves before Lila does. His hands stay in his lap.

Lila bites at his lip, hard enough to draw blood, and Holland draws back with a soft noise. He watches her and says nothing, expression still shuttered. Kell could learn a thing or two from him.

"Are you afraid of me?" Lila asks.

Holland licks at his lip. He is, to Lila's amusement, blushing just a little, at the tips of his ears. "Not any more so than I think is prudent."

Lila crosses her arms. "Then do you think I'm fragile?"

That sets Holland off laughing again, harder and louder this time. 

"Good," Lila says, pleased despite herself. "Then what's the problem?"

"There are a myriad of reasons you might have to want to slip a knife between my ribs. So far, you haven't, and I don't believe you intend to. I'm just trying to avoid giving you any reason to change your mind." He spreads his hands. "Call it self-preservation."

"Self preservation is boring. And I'm not going to kill you."

"Because it would upset Kell?"

"Because," Lila says, and then stops. It's not because it would upset Kell, though of course it would. But when has Lila ever let that stop her from doing anything?

There are a lot of reasons. It would be too easy, for Holland and for herself; it would make all the time she'd spent getting used to Holland's presence a waste; it would unbalance the connection of the binding rings that already feels like it's a part of Lila's heart.

And it wouldn't make her happy. And Barron, dead he may be, had only ever wanted, most of all, for Lila to be happy.

"I make my own choices," Lila says, finally. "Kell doesn't get to make them for me, and neither do you. I don't care what you think I should want." She grins. "I want everything."

Holland looks, just for a second, like Lila had stabbed him anyway. "What?" she demands.

"It's nothing." Holland looks away. "You reminded me of someone for a moment. That's all." 

"Tell me about them," Lila says. She picks up the bottle of wine and settles herself on Holland's bed.

Holland watches her for a moment, and then he takes up his wineglass, and does.

-

Kell rises early the next morning, though not as early as Lila, who always wakes up with the start of the morning watch. 

Holland is drinking tea in the mess, looking much more relaxed than Kell feels. That might have something to do with Lila sitting across from him, her feet in his lap. 

"You know," Kell points out, as he sits down with his bowl of porridge, "other people do actually eat here."

Lila doesn't look up from the papers she's sorting through. "My crew knows better than to say anything." She has a good point. Kell hasn't once heard any member of the crew question Holland's presence on the _Night Spire_ at all. He's not particularly inconspicuous, and he has no regular duties, so the crew really must know how to keep their curiosity to themselves. Or they simply know better than to ask nosy questions where Lila might hear them.

Kell looks at Holland. Holland raises an eyebrow at him, inclining his head towards Lila, as if to say, _what can you do?_

"So that's settled," Lila says, flipping a page. 

"Is it?" Kell asks.

"Seems pretty settled to me," Lila says. She taps the ring on her finger. "I think it has been for a while."

Kell shoots Holland a helpless look. He takes another drink of his tea. "I thought you'd be used to this sort of thing," he says. 

"You don't ever really get used to Lila," Kell admits.

"Damn right," Lila says. Holland picks up her feet and deposits them in Kell's lap, and gets up to get more tea.

"Are you really okay with this, Lila?"

She puts down her papers and leans her head on her hand. "Are you not?"

Lying to Lila is a pointless endeavor. "Of course I am." He puts his face in his hands. "It's just--this has gotten complicated, hasn't it."

"Not really," Lila says. "It's like you keep saying. We're the last Antari. Makes perfect sense to me."

"You still never answered my question."

Lila shrugs. "We've come to an understanding. And anyway, it's--easier, don't you think? With more than one person?"

"You have an interesting definition of easy." But then, Kell supposes he already knew that.

Lila looks determinedly back down at her papers. "I don't have to worry so much," she says. "You're both idiots, but you'd do fine without me."

Kell doesn't even know where to start with that. "You're not going to leave, Lila." He's certain, whether or not Lila is.

Lila tips her head back to the ceiling, but Kell can still hear the smile in her voice. "Of course. You're the expert." 

When Holland comes back, he sets a cup of tea down in front of Kell as well.

"You know," Kell says, looking down into the cup speculatively, "Rhy is never going to let me live this down."

Holland smiles at that, the brief flickering of a candle flame. Kell thinks he's seen Holland smile more these past few weeks than he did in the prior eight years of knowing him. 

He looks down at the ring on his finger, twisting it. Maybe he really is an idiot.

-

Holland raps his knuckles against Lila's cabin door near the end of the third watch. She opens it, stepping aside to let him in. "I was just going to go looking for you. Do you have any more of that wine you were drinking before?"

"Should the captain be drinking while on duty?"

Lila shrugs. "Alucard did, and he seemed to get along fine."

"Sorry to disappoint, but that was my only bottle." Between them, he and Lila had finished off most of it. 

It's odd, to be here without Kell. He's up on the deck, giving a few members of the crew elementary magic lessions. He seems to think they're scared of him, though it's obvious they have the same awed respect for him that they do for Lila. 

"When I sailed with Alucard, he and I used to sit together at night, drinking and talking." Lila sits down at the small table in the corner of her room, and gestures for Holland to take the seat across from her. "My Arnesian wasn't very good at first, but at least he knew English."

"I can imagine." Holland misses the sharp corners of Mahktan in his mouth. He speaks it to himself, sometimes, alone in his cabin. Otherwise, he fears he'll forget it, another part of his world slipping away from him. Though even if he went back today, it's not as if he'd have anyone in particular to speak to. "An interesting trick of fate, that English is the common tongue where you come from."

Lila shrugs. "Here, it's only useful for talking to stuffy royals. Alucard and Kell included." 

It occurs to Holland, suddenly, that this is a thing he can have: an aimless conversation about almost nothing at all, the sea gently rocking the ship below them. Eventually, Kell will tire of his lessons and come down to join them, and Lila's smile will widen when he does. Lila isn't going to pull a knife on him, no matter how angry he makes her, because she doesn't want him dead. 

Thrumming underneath his skin, Holland can feel her magic, and Kell's only a step farther away. It's comforting in the same way this conversation is.

Holland doesn't know if he'll ever quite get used to feeling comfortable.

"I was going to ask if I could borrow some parchment and a pen," he says.

Lila nods her head to her desk drawer. When Holland gets up to open it, it's full of a haphazard pile of parchment, a few pens, and a half-full pot of ink. "I don't use it for much," she tells him. "What do you need to for? Love letters for Kell?"

"I could write one for you," Holland observes.

"Just try it," Lila says, grinning. Holland, in truth, can't imagine what a love letter would even look like. He expects Lila doesn't have much idea either. The idea always seemed absurd. How could you take something as elemental as an emotion and spill it onto a page, messy and uncontrolled? 

Even with Talya, it hadn't been easy to put into words. And afterwards, there had never again been a point in trying.

He gathers a few sheets of parchment, the ink, and a pen, and returns to the table. "There are stories from my world that don't exist here," he says. "I thought I might try my hand at writing them down."

Lila taps her fingers against the table. "Got any good stories about ships? Adventures?"

Holland leans back in his chair. "A few." He closes his eyes, searching for the words. " _I sing of arms and a man, exiled by fate..._ "

Lila's eyes are bright as she listens. 

-

Things begin to reach a strange sort of equilibrium. Lila distrusts it. She's not used to steadiness. Alucard, if he were here, would tell her that she was jumping at shadows.

It's not that she's waiting for Holland to betray them. She knows he won't, but it's the knowing that bothers her so much. She's _sure_ , and she doesn't know why. It comes from the same place in her stomach where the binding rings tie her to Holland and Kell.

That should bother her more, too. But every boat needs an anchor.

Holland comes to her and Kell's cabin most nights, to play Sanct or drink wine or to teach them spells. Kell still thinks Lila doesn't noticed the way he tenses up every time he uses his magic, the grimace that melts away as soon as he notices he's doing it. She can't feel it through the binding rings, but Holland knows too--he caught her eye over Kell's head once as Holland taught them _As Ligas_ , tether. 

Lila is still waiting for the right moment to bring it up. In truth, she's waiting for Kell to tell her, though it's starting to look like that's not going to happen. 

Most of the time, Holland returns to his own cabin. Sometimes he stays the night. In a way, he reminds Lila of Esa. He has the same quiet grace, and the same fickleness. Some nights he stays for a single game of Sanct before retiring, or merely sits alone in the corner of a room, reading while Lila and Kell talk.

Lila never feels like she has him fully figured out. He's so much less straightforward than Kell is. It's like picking a lock where the tumblers keep changing.

It's also much harder to ruffle his feathers than it is with Kell, which makes it so much more _fun_.

Tonight, Holland is sitting in a corner of Lila's bed, reading a book about ships that Alucard had left in Lila's cabin. Kell is trying to explain a finer point of the rules of Sanct to Lila, in order to prove that her last win hadn't been legal. It's getting a bit boring. Lila rolls her eyes and stands up, yanking Kell up by the collar to follow her.

Kell sighs. "Okay, okay, you win." 

"Obviously," Lila says, and she pushes him down on the bed beside Holland. She takes Kell's hands and pins them down above his head, straddling his waist, and looks up to find Holland watching her. "Little help here?" she asks, grinning.

The corner of Holland's mouth lifts, one of his sideways smiles. Lila has begun to realize that those are the most real ones, quick and sharp as the slice of a knife. Holland doesn't put his book down, but he reaches over to take Kell's hands in one of his, pressing them down into the blankets.

Kell tips his head back so that he can see both of them. "I'm pretty sure this is cheating," he says, breathless. "I hate both of you."

"Liar," Lila says, leaning back on her heels. Holland, still keeping his place in his book, leans down to kiss Kell. Kell arches up into it, inhaling sharply through his nose. 

"Unfair," he says, unsteadily, when Holland pulls away and goes back to his book, his hand still keeping Kell's arms above his head. 

"Stop whining." Lila pushes her hands up under his shirt, and grins when she hears Holland laugh, like the rustling of wind through trees. 

Kell catches her eye, smiling. Lila is finding she likes it, conspiring with and against two people all at once. It's fun, trying to make Kell squawk and Holland smile. And in the end, she always, always wins. 

Holland still has nightmares, like the one Lila witnessed all those weeks ago on Jastra's ship, though they never speak about them. Or at least, Lila doesn't. She wakes that night, tucked into the side of the bed closest to the wall, to find Holland shivering beside her, his knuckles white where they're clenching the sheets. On his other side, Kell is watching him, quiet and pensive. Eventually, he reaches out to card his fingers through Holland's hair. Still asleep, Holland relaxes into it.

Hopeless romantics, the both of them. 

-

A month after they set sail, Holland stands at the rail. The _Night Spire_ cuts through the water like a flame through the dark.

"I'll have to go back someday," he says, resting his arms on the railing, face turned toward the sea. "This world will never be my home."

"Sure," Lila says, beside him. "Homes are nice and all. But it's like a compass, right? Something to keep yourself pointed towards. Doesn't mean you have to stay there all the time."

"I am living on borrowed time, you know."

" _Stolen_ time," Lila corrects. "It's the best kind."

Holland looks out at the horizon. The sun's just beginning to set, the light melting down into the water below. "I didn't realize before, what it is you like about sailing. How freeing it can be."

The ship speeds up as Lila adds another gust of wind to the sails--Holland can feel her do it. It's almost nostalgic. "It's the best thing in the world," she says. 

Kell finds them just as the crew is beginning to take up the call. "Iduna says she's sighted land," he says. Holland can just see the port, far to the west. Lila told him it's a city called Velas. Holland's never been there before. It's been a long time since he's seen someplace new.

Someday, Holland knows, he will return to his home. He'll sit beside the brook where he tried, so many times, to give the world back his blood, bleeding himself of the magic that he'll never have again. He'll take off his boots and dangle his feet in the water. Beside him, Lila will do the same, her arm thrown around his shoulders, casual enough to be an accident. Kell will sit cross-legged on his other side, his hand clasped in Holland's.

None of them will say goodbye.

Holland will lie back in the grass and close his eyes, the last two Antari beside him and his world around him humming in his bones, slowly waking up. He won't open them again. 

But for now, he leans against the railing of the _Night Spire_ , Lila and Kell warm at his side, bickering about what they're going to do once they make port. Holland breathes in deep. London will wait for him. Homes always do.

**Author's Note:**

> To be honest, I feel pretty bad about keeping Holland in Red London in this story--I genuinely really loved the last section we get from him in ACoL--but, you know, sacrifices have gotta be made in the name of shipping.


End file.
